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Description

A program incorporating history and maritime music of significance to Apalachicola. The program traces a voyage on theMontezumaof the Black Ball line, the first shipping company to schedule trips, twice a month, across the Atlantic. TheMontezumais among the larger ships of the Black Ball’s fleet and was built in 1849. Her route is the “Cotton Triangle” which brought manufactured goods, implements, hardware, and other merchandise to Florida; transported cotton to Europe, Liverpool and LaHavre; and returned with immigrants to New York. It’s December 1853 and we are headed to the port of Apalachicola. Our voyage begins in New York, and the Black Ball’s Quaker owners must muster a crew of 28 sailors, and a cook. Captain DeCoursey and his wife and three officers are already aboard. As the crew prepares to set sail, they begin to sing their shanties, work songs that musically unified the crew as they performed their tasks. The program thus follows theMontezumaalong her voyage, singing historical sea shanties indicative of each leg of the journey and ports visited, with a historical narrative based on actual voyages of this vessel interwoven between the songs. This well-researched collection of shanties includes tunes with documented connections to this trade route and to Apalachicola.

Arrive early to get a seat! Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. The performance begins at 7:00, and will be followed by a reception on the docks at 8:00, all for a donation of only $5. Light servings of low country boil (shrimp, corn, potatoes, sausage) will be served. Cash bar available.

“Now heave away at the windlass. You, chantyman, give us Rye-O! and raise the decks, raise the very dead, Heave-and-away!”